Ending One Adventure, Beginning Another

I guess it is time to make a blog posting on my leave from Mali and the Peace Corps. For the specifics: I was medically separated from Peace Corps Mali in the end of February 2012. About four months into my service I feel off a building – yes I know, its true – and hurt my wrist. I did not think it was an issue, so I did not go to the PCMO to get it looked at. Fast forward 8 months when a ladder I was on broke and I feel again, landing on my hurt wrist and slicing open my ankle with a rusted nail. After a very interesting trip to the local hospital where I was the new owner of 5 brand new stitches, I went down to Bamako to get it looked at. While I was in Bamako, the news of my wrist was revealed, and after numerous doctors’ appointments, we realized I would have to have surgery on my wrist in America and was medically separated.

Being back in America: For every volunteer, adjusting back to America is different. Especially when a volunteer has been medically separated, the news of going back to America is not only a daunting task, but it is the worst possible thing that could happen to you. To leave the Peace Corps early was, simply, tragic. All of my fellow volunteers understand this notion of leaving before our time because one month after I left, Peace Corps Mali was evacuated due to security issues with the Coup D’Etat and the war up north. I have not put anything on my blog or Facebook detailing the coup or me leaving Mali, because of one simple thing, it was too painful.

Every day since I have been home has been a challenge. I will repeat this again; adjusting is different for every volunteer. Some volunteers leaving after 27 months and weeks of traveling, some choose to leave, and some get forced to beyond their will. Every experience lends to different adjustment patterns and behaviors at home. As I said, I have not updated my blog or Facebook because it is simply too painful. Thinking about Mali, about my family and my fellow PCV’s is a challenge for me. I feel alone in America with no one who can even begin to comprehend what I am going through or what I went through. For me, adjusting sucks. It is hard. Every day I have to force myself out of the house and do something that when I was in Mali, I only wished to do. That’s the strange thing about the Peace Corps. While you are there, you wish to vacation in America, have cheese, great food and all the amenities that American offers. Yet, once you come back, for me anyways, it is like a blank slate. All these things I dreamed about meant nothing to me. I realized I did not have to have electricity, or great food, or air conditioning to make me happy. All I needed was my family and friends. Now, to all of you out there, this may not make since. Yet, all I want is SanKaw back, to be with my Malian family in my hut, gazing at the stars at night, and struggling to make sense of a language I did not fully comprehend. I miss the simple life. I miss people who understand the simple life and who take compassion and gratitude for everything that is unnecessary in life. I miss the time in my life where I could discover who I was and wanted to be, and I miss the people who did not judge me for that. The Peace Corps is an amazing thing because when you are in it, you can be whom you truly are. We always said you have to be a little crazy to be in the Peace Corps; Its true. Who else would do what we do? What we did? Yet, those crazy people who I met where some of the most truthful, beautiful and real people.

What is happening in Mali right now breaks my heart, and if I think about it, about the family I left behind, the family I abandoned, I can not help but feeling hopeless, a failure, and unworthy to have been in their family for 13 months. I have many unkind words for Mr. Sonogo, but all I wish is that his agenda does not hurt my family. I know this is probably not going to happen. I know the effects of this coup will be heard for years to come, and the people who are going to suffer are the common Malian, who are just trying to live their daily lives with a simple grace that no American can understand.

Being back in America is hard. Yet, we all must strive for forgiveness within ourselves to understand we did everything we could while we were over in Mali, and the strength to move forward with our lives, taking Mali with us wherever we go. As for me, I will be moving to Uganda to work with an amazing non-profit organization called BeadforLife. I will be working, as a representative of BeadforLife in Northern Uganda with their Shea Butter project. I am so excited to begin this new journey in Uganda. I am excited to, in a way, start over and give back to this new community of women who make the Shea butter to strengthen the lives of their families.

Many people have negative things to say about the Peace Corps. They say its too much money. They say “how much can you actually do in two years”, they say that the adults who are sent over to volunteer are wasting their time and not doing anything productive. Well, to all of you skeptics out there, I was changed in the Peace Corps. I’m not sure how but I know, for a fact, that it was a change that not only needed to happen, but I wanted to happen. The relationship I had with my village, family and fellow PCV’s taught me more about responsibility, love, friendship, and the meaning of life than any other that I have. Furthermore, I know that I helped, even in a small way, in my village. Although my project never came to fulfillment, when I left, the look in my counterparts and families’ eyes broke my heart, and was worth more than any words could express. I will forever be Nana Traoré. I will never forget Mali, no matter how hard it is to think about.

I wanted to thank you all for your continued support. The love and friendship I have experienced over the last year has been incredible and will never go unacknowledged. I hope you continue to read my blog, because if you haven’t already noticed, I have changed it to continue on with my life in Uganda. “I bora so, I nana so” --- when you leave home, you come home.

Latrine and Soak Pit Project

Hello Everyone!

It's been so long! much has been going on in the world of Peace Corps Mali. The holidays past with a blast and i've been working extremely hard on a project for my village. At this moment, a proposal is online to ask for donations for a Latrine and Soak Pit project. The letter below describes the project and incluses a link to the PCPP --- Peace Corps Partnership Program -- if you would like to donate. Furthermore, I have written up a community assessment paper that describes the project in full detail, with information on community demographics, economics and lifestyle. If you would like a copy, please email me at hannah.d.jordan@gmail.com and I will send you a copy. Thank you so much for all your support!

Here is the link to the PCPP website:



Hannah D. Jordan
Peace Corps Volunteer Mali
Health Extension Volunteer
hannah.d.jordan@gmail.com
_____________________________________________

February 12, 2012



Dear Friends, Family and Community:

"i bora so, i nana so" -- When you leave home, you come home.

Hello! My name is Hannah Jordan and I am a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali, West Africa. I am the first Peace Corps volunteer invited to work in Niamana-Bouncouma, a rural Malian community of about 4,500 people. I work as a health volunteer. Diseases such as giardiasis, amoebas, pink eye, hookworm and malaria constantly ravage the community, to the point where they impede community members’ ability to work and live in a socially constructive environment.

For the last five months community leaders and I have been developing a project aimed at combating the environmental factors behind some of the above diseases, specifically malaria. Malaria continues to be an epidemic in Mali. Children and older members of my community die from malaria and malaria-related symptoms every year. Fortunately, we have been able to distribute treated mosquito nets to the entire community. Unfortunately, this is not enough. Walking around my community, it is common to see pools of human waste and bathwater collecting in the streets which provide perfect breeding grounds for malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

In order to combat this problem, during April and May we will build 36 simple pit latrines and 46 soak pits (water dispensing holes where wastewater flows and becomes distributed into the groundwater to decrease the amount of standing wastewater).

I have come here today to ask for your help. My village did their part and collected 50% of the proceeds for the project, an unprecedented feat in rural Mali. About two weeks ago, I discovered that we would not receive any funding from the Peace Corps for our project. Upon hearing this news, saying I was devastated was an understatement. Realizing that my community would not receive the funds necessary to undertake this project in which they had been working, collectively so hard for over five months, was crushing. In Mali, there is a saying, when you leave home, you come home. Niamana is my home, they are my people, and they are my family. I told myself I would do everything in my power to make sure my village receives the latrines and soak pits because they deserve them, because they deserve to be healthy, and because their children deserve to grow up in a healthy environment. This is where you come in.

If every person donates a minimum of $20 USD, we would only need 215 people to make this project a reality. There are ABSOLUTELY NO OPERATING costs. The way this works is the Peace Corps has a funding opportunity called Peace Corps Partnership Program (PCPP). Donations may be made to my project at http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate. Search for the Latrine and Soak Pit project under my project number, 688-369, or by my name, Jordan, and then the country, Mali. Below is the contact information for the PCPP if you would like to speak with someone at the Peace Corps office regarding the program and other methods of donating to my project:

The Office of Private Sector Initiatives
1111 20th St. NW
Washington, DC, 20526
(800).424.8580 ext. 2170
donate@peacecorps.gov

All the money that you donate will go directly to my community and is tax deductible. As soon as my PCPP monetary contributions are complete, the money will be deposited into my Malian bank account, and we can proceed with the project. It is a simple and safe procedure to give, and your donations will help to clean up an entire village in Mali, West Africa.

Our goals:

1.To build 36 simple pit latrines and 46 soak pits.
2.To paint 12-16 health and education murals on the side of the health center walls.

This project could drastically change the lives of over 4,500 people for the better. There are limitless opportunities for improvements in every sector of life when the health of a community is improved. I am doing everything in my power to make this project successful, and I cannot do it alone. I need help. Please, any monetary contribution will be appreciated. If successful, we will be building 36 new latrines and 46 new soak pits, as well as increasing the overall livelihood and health of my community.

In addition, due to the high illiteracy rate in Mali which is currently fluctuating around 71%, our community leaders asked me to paint multiple murals alongside the health center walls in order to visually convey sustainable information about washing hands, the importance of covering a latrine, and other imperative health messages. Through this project, my community and I will be painting 12-16 murals throughout the next year.

Below I have attached my “Community Assessment Grant Proposal” which will detail the entire project from community demographics to outlines on all expenses and an approximate timeline. If you have any questions, please email me at hannah.d.jordan@gmail.com. I will keep all of you in “the loop”, and send pictures and updates on the current progress once the project begins.

Thank you very much for reading my incredibly long email! Any monetary contribution amount is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,



Hannah Jordan
Peace Corps Volunteer Mali
Health Extension Volunteer
Hello World, Here I Come

Small Successes

It’s hard being where we are and doing what we are doing. Yes, it is hard being a Peace Corps volunteer, but living and growing up in this generation is hard to. Many of us don’t give ourselves enough credit for our accomplishments. We only look at the failures in our lives and forget about all the small successes. When I was in high school all I did was go go go. I had to do everything because I felt that people would think I was a failure if I wasn’t a strait A student, in all the clubs and doing numerous extracurricular activities. I was concerned not only with what my parents thought, but I was concerned with what my future college recruiter would think. At then when I was accepted to college, I started to be concerned with what my future roommate would think about me. Would I be skinny enough? Pretty enough? Rich enough? Smart enough? Good enough? Once I entered college, my thoughts concentrated around my coach and if I was good enough to be on the rowing team. Did I have what it took? For four years of my life, well for much of my teenage and young adult life, all I cared about was what people thought of me. Was I good enough? Was I matching life up? Was this the way I was supposed to act? I never one looked at the small victories in my life. No, I only looked at what I wasn’t doing, or what someone else was doing better.
I always said that I wanted to join the Peace Corps because I wanted to change my life. I wanted to leave my family and friends and come back someone different, someone better. I was so wrong. I am not becoming better here, none of us are. We are all growing into the people we all ready were, but had no time to find. I like to think of one of the most engaging and special moments in Mali to be one, which included a group of women and myself at market. Now, when I tell this story to other people they’re like “really Hannah, that’s your special moment?” – well yes it is. I was sitting there, on a log, at the end of a long market day. Since I am living in Mali, the sun was beating down on me so much that all my clothes, of course, were soaked in sweat. Nonetheless, I sat there, on that log, with this little 5 foot woman who lives in my village. We started talking – aka laughing and pointing at each other – when another woman (im not sure who she actually is) came up to me and said she loved my necklace. I said thank you and jokingly took it off and gave it to her. So she, in return, took hers off and, moving the hair, clipped her necklace onto my sweat soaked neck. She looked at me and said, there, now we’re friends. Then, of course, the necklace I was gave her broke, haha. Well, of course, I felt terrible and tried to give her necklace back. She would not take it, telling me she could fix the necklace and wear it all the time.
This simple act of friendship caught me so off guard I didn’t know what to do. Yes, I had been going to market with these women for months now, and yes we had talked before and yes they were the closest people to “friends” I had in village, but that simple act of kindness blew me away. I sat there on the horse cart going home and began to think about the differences between Malian and American culture. Yes Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a illiteracy rate of around 70%, a malnutrition problem, where children only go to school till the age of, hopefully, around 13 and then – if we’re lucky – wait a couple of years to get married and start reproducing. Yet, with all of these “problems”, the people in Mali are a whole other story. They’re kind. They’re generous. They’re loving. They are funny. They care. Yes, they might not “think the way we do”, but is that bad? Why do we need to live with washers and dryers? Why do we need to drive a car every where we go when walking can do? Why do we need to blow dry our hair every morning, just so we can look cute walking down the street impressing total strangers? Why do we need all these things? I think back on my high school and college years and all I think about are the things I did to impress other people, socially and professionally. I never did anything for myself or because it was simply the right thing to do. I lost everything about myself that I wanted to be, everything that I wanted to grow up to be.
Mali is special in a way because it allows you to look at life simply. It gives you not only another view of the world, but another view of yourself. One of the aspects of the PC that I find so difficult is the way our mental thinking is challenged here. We cannot start a project from beginning to end just in a couple of months. Other things matter or get in the way, which prevent us from doing so. Sometimes it is very difficult. We have grown up in a culture and environment where everything is go go go. We have to get things done and get them done now. If we don’t, we are failures and we don’t deserve to be doing what we’re doing. We never give ourselves credit for our small successes when all we do is look at those few small failures. We are too hard on ourselves. We deserve so much more. For peat sake, we are in the Peace Corps. We are living in AFRICAN VILLAGES BY OURSELVES! We are eating with our hands, living without electricity, speaking new languages, peeing in a hole, sleeping with bugs. We, in its very definition, are a success. We have trained our brains to only think about the big projects, the big steps in life, big big big, yet, sometimes what matters is not big, but is small. The smells of shea ripening in the hot Malian sun, the smile of a friend who understands you and visa versa you understand them, a small gesture of friendship between two very different people. Life is full of small successes. Just because they are small does not mean they matter any less. We forget this. We are, in a way, trained to forget this.
In light of this, I have placed below some small successes. Some are my successes in country so far. Some are cultural gatherings between new friends. And some are plain beauty found in a country full of beauty, grace and eloquence.

First manicures ever! and with sparkelly nail polish too!